Portraiture and Photography in Africa

Description

The cultural, social, and political practice of portraiture

Beautifully illustrated, Portrait Photography in Africa offers new interpretations of the cultural and historical roles of photography in Africa. Twelve leading scholars look at early photographs, important photographers' studios, the uses of portraiture in the 19th century, and the current passion for portraits in Africa. They review a variety of topics, including what defines a common culture of photography, the social and political implications of changing technologies for portraiture, and the lasting effects of culture on the idea of the person depicted in the photographic image.

Foreword \ Raoul Birnbaum
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Study of Photographic Portraiture in Africa \ John Peffer

Part 1. Exchange
1. Portrait Photography: A Visual Currency in the Atlantic Visualscape \ Jürg Schneider
2. Lutterodt Family Studios and the Changing Face of Early Portrait Photographs from the Gold Coast \ Erin Haney
3. Yoruba Studio Photographers in Francophone West Africa \ Érika Nimis
4. The Fieldworker and the Portrait: The Social Relations of Photography \ Elisabeth L. Cameron

Part 2. Social Lives
5. "A Photograph Steals the Soul": The History of an Idea \ Z. S. Strother
6. The Past in the Present: Photographic Portraiture and the Evocation of Multiple Histories in the Bamum Kingdom of Cameroon \ Christraud M. Geary
7. Mombasa on Display: Photography and the Formation of an Urban Public, from the 1940s Onward \ Isolde Brielmaier
8. Portrait Photography in a Postcolonial Age: How Beauty Tells the Truth \ Liam Buckley

Part 3. Traditions
9. Likeness or Not: Musings on Portraiture in Canonical African Art and Its Implications for African Portrait Photography \ Jean Borgatti
10. kó-graphy: w Portraits \ Rowland Abdún
11. Visual Griots: Identity, Aesthetics, and the Social Roles of Portrait Photographers in Mali \ Candace M. Keller
12. The Intermediality of Portraiture in Northern Côte d'Ivoire \ Till Förster

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Loisirs
• Histoire de la photographie
• African Studies
• African
• África
• History of art
• African people
• Photography
• Art
• History
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 24 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253008725
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

PORTRAITURE PHOTOGRAPHY IN AFRICA
AFRICAN EXPRESSIVE CULTURES
Patrick McNaughton, editor
Associate editors
Catherine M. Cole
Barbara G. Hoffman
Eileen Julien
Kassim Kon
D. A. Masolo
Elisha Renne
Zo Strother
PORTRAITURE PHOTOGRAPHY IN AFRICA
EDITED BY
John Peffer and Elisabeth L. Cameron
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
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2013 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
This book is printed on acid-free paper. Manufactured in South Korea
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Portraiture and photography in Africa / edited by John Peffer and Elisabeth L. Cameron.
pages cm. - (African expressive cultures)
Some essays originally presented at the conference Portrait Photography in African Worlds (February 3-4, 2006), University of California, Santa Cruz.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00860-2 (pbk.) - ISBN 978-0-253-00872-5 (e-book) 1. Africans-Portraits. 2. Portrait photography-Social aspects-Africa. I. Peffer, John, editor of compilation. II. Cameron, Elisabeth Lynn, editor of compilation.
TR681.A33P67 2013
770.96-dc23
2012047537
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
With gratitude to Patricia and Rowland Rebele and Raoul Birnbaum
CONTENTS
Foreword \ Raoul Birnbaum
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Study of Photographic Portraiture in Africa
JOHN PEFFER
PART ONE. EXCHANGE
1 Portrait Photography: A Visual Currency in the Atlantic Visualscape
J RG SCHNEIDER
2 Lutterodt Family Studios and the Changing Face of Early Portrait Photographs from the Gold Coast
ERIN HANEY
3 Yoruba Studio Photographers in Francophone West Africa
RIKA NIMIS
4 The Fieldworker and the Portrait: The Social Relations of Photography
ELISABETH L. CAMERON
PART TWO. SOCIAL LIVES
5 A Photograph Steals the Soul : The History of an Idea
Z. S. STROTHER
6 The Past in the Present: Photographic Portraiture and the Evocation of Multiple Histories in the Bamum Kingdom of Cameroon
CHRISTRAUD M. GEARY
7 Mombasa on Display: Photography and the Formation of an Urban Public, from the 1940s Onward
ISOLDE BRIELMAIER
8 Portrait Photography in a Postcolonial Age: How Beauty Tells the Truth
LIAM BUCKLEY
PART THREE. TRADITIONS
9 Likeness or Not: Musings on Portraiture in Canonical African Art and Its Implications for African Portrait Photography
JEAN BORGATTI
10 k -graphy: w Portraits
ROWLAND AB D N
11 Visual Griots: Identity, Aesthetics, and the Social Roles of Portrait Photographers in Mali
CANDACE M. KELLER
12 The Intermediality of Portraiture in Northern C te d Ivoire
TILL F RSTER
Contributors
Index
FOREWORD
RAOUL BIRNBAUM
Perhaps counterintuitively, this book has its origins in a six-year project on Chinese biographies/autobiographies and portraits/self-portraits that I led while serving as Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in the History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It seemed to me that many of the issues I encountered as I engaged with Chinese photographic traditions might be constructively pursued with African materials as well, or set against those traditions to create a productive tension. To this end, Elisabeth Cameron, a valued department colleague, generously agreed to co-organize a conference on portrait photography in Africa. We were fortunate also that John Peffer was able to spend a year with us teaching at UCSC; Elisabeth and John were responsible for selecting and inviting the many Africanists who joined us in Santa Cruz for the conference in February 2006. Although we had expected to divide the volume s editorial work among the three of us, and I also planned to write a more formal research paper based on my conference presentation, illness required that I step back from the scene. I am glad now to be able to return with this brief foreword. Elisabeth and John deserve extraordinary credit, as well as my very considerable appreciation, for doing far more work than reasonably anticipated in order to see the volume through to publication. It also is a great pleasure to recognize with gratitude that the long-term project, including this segment, was made possible by the kind generosity of Patricia and Rowland Rebele, who created the endowed chair in our department.
A few words on portraiture and portrait photography in China may provide a sense of some of the issues animating the organization of the conference, which was the starting point for this volume.
Until recently, the vast bulk of portraiture in China was created specifically for memorial purposes. Many of these portrait paintings were created by local specialists after the death of the subject; sometimes it was simply a matter of filling in the facial features of the specific individual to complete a prepainted design. That face often was produced according to descriptions given by family members (sometimes using the Chinese craftsman s equivalent of the identikit commonly used by U.S. police departments to construct drawings of crime suspects). Representations in some cases were formulaic, but the likenesses were considered sufficient for ritual purposes. The introduction of photographic technologies, and increasing access to them in urban areas by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, made accurate representations possible, and so these images produced by new technologies rapidly became favored for this very traditional function. Photography also created a new range of possibilities for the relatively easy production of family pictures, records of public gatherings, and the like. Importantly, photographic technologies provided new opportunities for self-examination of stable representations of one s own image. Such portrait photographs became significant objects of exchange as well.
There is much that could be said about the immense changes in the production and dissemination of photographic images-largely portraiture, of one kind or another-that have occurred over these past few decades in China (and in many other places as well). What had been the province mainly of professionals-either studio-based or semi-itinerant-and a few skilled hobbyists now is within reach of anyone with a reasonably equipped mobile phone. Family images that once were only mounted in shrine-like fashion on domestic walls or kept in treasured photo albums now may be toted around as electronic data in a laptop or in that same mobile phone, and readily transmitted to friends as well, without need for negatives and processing. In Tolstoy s War and Peace (to jump to a context very far from either Africa or China for a moment), one may be struck by the way that the early nineteenth-century Russian nobility depicted there-even generals strategizing at battlefields-frequently take out their snuffboxes and gaze for moment at the inset ivory-painted miniature portraits of a spouse or child. In comparison to a world where portrait images were precious and rare, now in many places including China they are ubiquitous. That does not mean, though, that such images have no power, even if they are reproduced again and again.
To take one small slice of Chinese photographic traditions, we might look to the worlds of Buddhist practitioners, especially as set in monasteries. (This is where most of my fieldwork on the China mainland took place, from 1986 through 2006.) I would like to sketch out a few points drawn from those Chinese Buddhist worlds, which may be of interest to those studying African portrait photography.
Photographic portraits of monks and nuns follow many of the conventions of earlier painting traditions. They are governed largely by set bodily poses and formulaic ways in which the face is presented to the camera; exceptions are startling. Very importantly, these photos (similar to certain paintings in earlier practices) may be used for memorial purposes, where they play an important part in funerary rituals and subsequent commemorative rites. They also may be given as gifts; often there is a sense of the powerful action of jieyuan in such gift-giving, of tying a knot of relationship that has repercussions for the future, including future lives. Photographic portrait images may be understood from the moment of production as having historical value, especially if they record the meeting of prominent individuals (as in the famous dual portrait made in Shanghai in the early 1950s of the two great meditation masters of that era, Xuyun and Laiguo) or the presence of a prominent individual at a certain site. In this historical mode, it is not unusual for a visitor to ask to have his or her picture taken standing beside a great monk. Again, in relation to the concept of jieyuan , it certifies the existence of a relationship, however fleeting, and it sets in motion a sense of continuing ties that may be resumed and developed in future lives.
Whether mounted on a wall within one s living quarters, displayed on a personal altar, or kept in a photo album, these photos are considered to have power. Because a portrait photo captures the physical image in an accurate way, it is felt, there is an intrinsic power that links directly to the force of the individual, whether alive or deceased. Thus, these photographs can be used for connection and invocation, and in such processes thousands of identical copies-however intimate the original image-may be distributed, but each one of the